Epinions going...going.....gone?

My opinion is that in the beginning Epinions had the lead. They paid top money (10 cents per hit), the most organized site, and the best standards for writing. Some time passed, they got thousands of writers but no real 'purchasers' so the money didn't roll in as expected. They then lowered the cents per hit according to category. That was all well and good until they fired most of their staff. When you tried to inquire to their customer service staff, you only received an automated response. The same exact response no matter what your question pertained to.

Everyone tried to keep calm and have faith that Epinions could handle it and would soon fix the 'bugs', pull themselves together and make it more of a family where everyone worked together to make the system profitable.

As the competitors went belly up, speaking of Themestream, Briteideas, etc. And once again Epinions lowered the cents per hit and 'let go' even more of their staff. Now you have no chance of receiving a personal response to any questions or suggestions yet they keep saying 'We are doing everything according to user feedback'....hmmm, makes you think....they keep firing staff members but encouraging members to keep writing and they will eventually make up their millions of dollars in debt? Yet the members want less pay for their hard work but will wait until Epinions shows a profit to get their reward? Sorry the USA does not work that way!

Epinions says that Income share was not affected by the loss of revenue over the last year but I can tell you, I have received the same number of hits for each review over the past 6 months and my income share has gone down drastically. Is this why they won't reveal the secret formula to calculate I/S? Because then everyone would know that it is going down?

I was one of the first to defend Epinions when they switched over to the beta site and I said 'give the change a FAIR chance' Well I have given it that and it only seems to be going down quicker than before. Most of the 'old' writers and readers are long gone. I now understand why that happened.

I only wrote ocassionally over the past few months because the 'feedback' that I perceive from the monthly 'chats' is that if you don't dedicate your life to reading, rating, and writing here at Epinions, you are worthless and will be paid only pennies. They fully expect (again this is my opinion of Epinions) you to spend every minute of your free time here at their site to help them earn money.

I have come to the conclusion that I have a real LIFE that is much more productive than sitting here working my butt off for pennies. Either way, Epinions has gone through all of its funding for the second time around. Us long time members submitted a million ways to cut down on the 'abusers' long ago but they waited much to long to implement any of the suggestions.

So I would suggest that the final few employees at Epinions start reading, writing, and rating to keep the ball rolling as many members have given up on Epinions. My personal opinion is that Epinions will soon shut down as all the other 'info sites' and I am sorry to see that happen. I think most of this could have been avoided if Epinions had only listened to the MEMBERS a long time ago.